Andrej Stancak

Adam: do you mean the alleged woman which the fake image brough by Chris appears to show, or do you mean the male figure seen in the original Darnell still? Or do you refer to the coloured photograph showing two ladies in the company of police officers, also brought up by Chris?

Here are the cropped views of Prayer Man in the original Darnell still (from prayer-man.com, left) and from Alan Ford's version of Darnell (right). The differences are glaring and disturbing. Among others, the arms in the right picture are thinner, appear crossed and touching a very bright object, and are orientated upwards in a sharper angle compared to the left image. The face and hair, and the neck area have clearly been manipulated. The head tilt is not the same in this pair of pictures. The whole Prayer Man's figure appear thinner in the right image than the left image.

Well, I only speculate about this possibilty. I would need to be able to view the Sixth Floor Museum version of Darnell myself before reaching that conclusion. However, if the picture brought here by Chris was photographed from the video system at SFM, then I am sure that the picture made available to researchers by the NBC/SFM is a fake. Based on the link provided by Chris earlier in this thread, it seems that Mr Hackerott from jfkassassinationforum.org had seen this particular picture when viewing Darnell in SFM.

Could it be that the picture provided by Alan Ford was photographed in the Sixth Floor Museum as displayed by the viewing system the Museum offers for viewing Darnell film? If this is the case, we are in big trouble because the NBC did grant viewing rights to the Sixth Floor Museum but they first made sure that the eager researchers never see the true figure of that unknow person at the western wall.

Chris: thanks for posting the Darnell picture. It is obvious that the photograph submitted by Alan Ford has been heavily worked out, this is not the original Darnell still. It is a great risk to use photographs of uncertain origin (we know Alan retrieved it but where from?), and it even opens the possibility that someone squeezes in a tampered version of the photograph. I would only use Prayer Man related pictures from jfkassassinationgallery.org or from prayer-man.com. If there are other sources of validated photographs, we should be able to review the history of these pictures.

Chris: where did you retrieve the "original" (the left-most one) from? It does not look like any of Darnell stills I ever saw. Can you please post a full-sized original still and a link to a page from which you have downloaded it? Thanks.

The conundrum around Prayer Man is frustrating, indeed. The impact of the positive identification of Prayer Man as Lee Oswald would be overwhelming and totally devastating for the Warren Commission report, hence the urgency of this question. Yet, the images themselves do not offer any intuitive confirmation of Prayer Man's identity due to heavy motion blur in most of the frames in Darnell or lack of signal in the critical area of the doorway in Wiegman. I would just keep cool. We may not be able to answer the question now but it does not mean we would not be able to do so in future. We already have positive data regarding Prayer Man's figure and those bits of data will come handy. However, I would not bet all my money on a decisive effect of a better, high-resolution copy of either Wiegman or Darnell or both. In Darnell, the problem is mostly the motion blur in most of the frames which problem cannot be alleviated by scanning the frames at a higher resolution. The best of Darnell stills is free of motion blur but it has Prayer Man's face burnt out; there is a chance that a new high-quality scan would retrieve some details in the facial region in this frame, however, this is not a guarantee. Eventually, the identification of Prayer Man will possibly be based on circumstantial data. This would be similar to the identification of Buell Wesley Frazier in Darnell film. His facial features are not detailed enough to offer unequivocal identification and yet, nobody disputes his identity in Darnell based on details such as: 1. body height and overall body build, 2. shape of his hairline and hair tone, 3. clothing, 4. consistency with his self- and other-people reports of where he was while in the doorway. The convergent effect of all these features and his testimony are enough to decide, even without a detailed view of his facial features. A similar process can be applied to Prayer Man even with the copies of Darnell/Wiegman film we currently have. So, what information do we have and what information we can still hope to find out regarding Prayer Man's figure? 1. He was a white Caucasian, excluding as candidates about 20% of general population in Dallas (and a large number of TSBD employees). 2. His hairline matches Type II male baldness pattern. Lee Oswald sported this type of hairline. 3. The top of Prayer Man's head is at the height of 5' 2 1/2'' above the top landing. This height was verified by 3D modelling and independently by comparing the known height of Buell Frazier (6') with Prayer Man's figure. The top of Prayer Man's head aligns with the lower aspect of Frazier's chin, meaning that Prayer Man's top of the head is about 9 1/2'' lower than the top of Frazier's head knowing that the height of human head in a person of Frazier's body height is 9 1/2''. I take the distance of the top of Prayer Man's head from the top landing as a fact. 4. If the top of Prayer Man's head was 5' 2 1/2'' above the top landing, there are only two possibilities as to the overall body height: 1) he stood on the top landing and was therefore a tiny person sized 5' 2 1/2''. 2) he stood on the step below the top landing in which case his body height would be 5' 2 1/2'' + the height of the first step (7 1/4'') giving the total body height of 5' 9 3/4''. 5. The possibility of Prayer Man being a tiny person standing with both his feet on the top landing would not give Prayer Man's figure as we see it in Darnell. This is because (A) his right elbow would appear to be too far from the brick pillar on the western wall, and (B) his arms would be located too high relative to the arms as seen in Prayer Man. 6. The solution which came out as the most plausible had Prayer Man standing with his right foot firmly on the first step, no slouching, and his left foot on the top landing with his left leg bent in the knee joint. This stance resembles Lee's stance in a number of his photographs (including the infamous BY photograph), and this stance was amplified by having the feet on two different platforms. The plausibility of this solution can be evaluated by overlaying the realistic model of Lee Oswald with Darnell still. Some Darnell stills show Prayer Man's left leg bent in knee joint. 7. The body height of 5' 9 3/4'' would fit Lee Oswald's body height of 5' 9'' plus the height of a shoe hill. Of course, there is a limited precision to my estimates, and I would say 1 cm (less than 1/2'') would be the possible error of my height estimates. 8. As Prayer Man was 5' 9'', he only could be a male because the probability of a female measuring 5'9'' in 1963 is negligible (the normal body height of females in the U.S.A in 1963 was 5'2'' with a standard deviation of 1''). 9. We come to Prayer Man clothes. In Darnell, we see almost a continuous grey throughout his garment from shirt to his trousers. This is consistent with the grey tones of his shirt (CE 151) and Lee's work trousers he had on him on Friday morning. I did a back reconstruction of possible colours which the grey tone of Prayer Man's shirt would yield after adjusting the shade of grey for luminance (the shirt was photographed in the shadow). The most likely colour was maroon, followed by green and other colours. 10. The absence of a clear transition between the shirt and trousers on Prayer Man's figure suggests that Prayer Man wore his shirt as a work shirt - with the front facings pulled out of his trousers. Also, we see his bare forearms (both in Darnell and Wiegman), which suggests that the short sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. This man was a manual worker, not a white collar employee or an office lady. 11. Finally, the front faces of Prayer Man's shirt show quite large dark spots which appear to be diagonally shaped, orientated from top right to bottom left. These dark spots may provide the unique identification clue as to who Prayer Man was. Of course, a high-resolution copy of Darnell still would help to delineate this shape better than a low-resolution copy. however, even now it is possible to evaluate the similarity of dark spots on Prayer Man's shirt and on shirt CE151. This task is not trivial at all and while I have posted the highlighted spots in a number of my previous posts, the real work of comparing the dark spots on CE151 with Prayer Man's shirt remains to be done. 12. And what about the missing self-identification? Unfortunately, this will not be possible to achieve given the nasty treatment Lee Oswald had received from the hands of Dallas Police. Being dead, Lee Oswald cannot identify himself. However, we have Hosty's notes; those notes say what Lee wanted to say - he was initially in Domino room, went to the 2nd floor to get soda, returned back to the first floor and then went to watch P. parade. Thus, did he speak truth, at one point he should have been photographed standing in the doorway. This is just what Darnell and Wiegman films indicate to us.

Exactly. Lee did say he was out when the motorcade passed the building (or rather the tail of the motorcade) and this has been effectively sanitised by not taking any voice or stenographic recordings of the interrogation sessions. Hosty's note on watching P. parade is the one minor crack that was somehow overlooked by the law enforcement and the Warren Commission. It took some 56+ years to retrieve at least this one bit of information. A couple of obvious question that may have be pertinent: Describe what you have seen when you were outside the building to watch the motorcade. Who was there with you ?- list all people you remember. How exactly did you get from 1026 North Beckley to the Texas Theatre? Please show your route on the map. Did anyone see you? There would be no lying if a trial would follow and Lee's alibi could have been verified.

Michael: you may wish to consider the following solution based on 3D modeling of Darnell doorway using realistic modelof Lee Harvey Oswald. In my view, Prayer Man did not have his arms fully crossed, rather both hands were infront of his chest but not touching. Here is an overlay of such 3D model solution with Darnell still. Absence of disparities between the two overlayed images (the 3D model and Darnell still) offers validation of this solution. It is debatable if the hands were exposed to sun light directly or whether the hands were in shadow but very close to the sun lit area of the doorway. This solution has both hands reflecting the sun but there would not be a problem to tuck both hands 1-2 cm backwords in which case the hands would be in the shadow. And this is a close up view of Prayer Man's location and posture (not from Darnell perspective). This man was 5' 9 3/4''.

David: I would concur with your proposition that the man on one of the lower steps and close to the western wall in Darnell was Lovelady. Billy Lovelady did dance around the doorway a lot over the period of time covered by Hughes film-Altgens6-Wiegman-Darnell. In Darnell, Shelley should be the man in the centre of the doorway, on the doorway landing. Here is my solution from my earlier reconstruction of the best still from Darnell film: And here is Shelley's description of what he was doing right after the final shot (this time period was covered by Darnell film): Mr. SHELLEY. Sounded like a miniature cannon or baby giant firecracker, wasn’t real loud. Mr. BALL. What happened; what did you do then? Mr. SHELLEY. I didn’t do anything for a minute. Mr. BALL. What seemed to be the direction or source of the sound? Mr. SHELLEY. Sounded like it came from the west. Mr. BALL. It sounded like it came from the west? Mr. SHELLEY. Yes. Mr. BALL. Then what happened? Mr. SHELLEY. Gloria Calvary from South-Western Publishing Co. ran back up there crying and said “The President has been shot” and Billy Lovelady and myself took off across the street to that little, old island and we stopped there for a minute. ------------------ It is possible that the lady in dark clothes facing the man standing on the steps could be Gloria Calvary. The important point is though that both Lovelady and Shelley are still on steps in Darnell fillm, and only then, after a very short period of time, they started their excursion toward the railroad yard.

Thanks, Pat, for clarifying it further, however, I am not interested in this story any longer. I do not care who allegedly saw this or that and whether he/she was certain about Prayer Man's identity or not because I want to have a high-resolution copy made from the original film on my hard drive. I would analyse the film in a very detailed manner and for an extensive period of time by myself, I would reconstruct Prayer Man's figure with even more realism than I was able to do, and only then I would draw any conclusions as to whether the footage is conclusive or not, and if there is enough evidence for accepting the hypothesis of Lee Oswald being that unknown person standing at the western wall. As it stands now, it is possible to say a lot about various features of Prayer Man's figure, however, a high-resolution copy would add important details such as a more precise shape of the dark pattern seen on Prayer Man's shirt which may be a decisive clue in accepting or refuting Oswald as Prayer Man.

Sorry, we cannot build the Prayer Man case on a story like this. It is a shame you brought it here. It suggests that people pursuing the hypothesis of Prayer Man being Oswald would not admit they had seen clear evidence to the contrary and chose to suppress it. That would make them fraudsters. We need to know who Prayer Man was, and if it turns out it was not Lee Oswald, we admit it and move on. For now though, there is enough of hints both from visual analysis of Darnell still and from written records (such as Hosty's notes) to pursue this trail. The hints globally strengthen the case of Prayer Man being Lee Oswald, and there is no single visual cue that would allow to dismiss Oswald as Prayer Man. For instance, if Prayer Man would show light coloured hair, blonde or light grey, we would be able to discard Oswald as a candidate right away because Oswald had dark hair. However, no elimination cue is available, at least I am not aware of it.

Some evidence is needed for your claims. Who was the collector in posession of better copies, who were the people allegedly seeing the "extremely clear" copy of the film (Darnell or Wiegman?). Else, your story is a hearsay and it should be ignored as such.

Roger: of course, Prayer Man is best featured in Darnell film, however, the relevant sequence of that film started only about 30 seconds after the last shot. The presence of Prayer Man (Lee Oswald?) in the doorway in Darnell film poses no issue regarding the question of whether Lee could watch the motorcade because the motorcade was already gone by that time. It is my conjecture that Prayer Man who could be Lee Oswald stayed in the doorway for a very short time, basically, he left the doorway to return to the building right after the end of Darnell film sequence. Thus, the total time for which Prayer Man could have stood in the doorway would be less than a minute or so, which also explains why no one had spotted him (except Buell Frazier who had to see that person as the two men stood only about 3 feet apart). As Prayer Man (Lee Oswald?) had left the doorway so early, it was still possible for him to get to the 2nd floor lunchroom via the front stairs to meet the Superintendent Roy Truly and Officer Marrion Baker. Actually, the only possibility for Baker to be able to spot Lee Oswald (via the small door window) entering the lunchroom was that Lee would be just approaching the 2nd floor lunchroom from the hallway (office area). The question is why would Lee return to the 2nd floor lunchroom if he had already been there earlier and bought his soda for lunch. I speculate that Lee wanted to know what was going on as he had some kind of foreknowledge. If you analyse Prayer Man's stance and direction of his gaze, he seemed like a person not interested in retrieving as much information from the Dealley Plaza as possible like all other doorway occupants were; he looks like a person contemplating his options, and he looks in direction of Elm/Houston street, the direction in which Lee left the Depository. It was entirely possible that Lee was enticed to participate in a "second plot" which aimed to bring him to the Redbird airfield and then to Cuba, with JFK's visit being a welcome distraction allowing him to depart unnoticed. But now, while in the doorway, he realised that JFK has been shot and Lee being a smart guy understood that his "second plot" may actually be connected with the killing of the President and that he (Lee) would be a potential fall guy. Thus, Lee may have been on his way up to the upper floors to clarify the situation but his plan was scuppered when he saw that both Officer Baker and Roy Truly were already on their way up. Lee was scared to death and he left the building immediately, retrieved his pistol from his room at 1026 North Beckley, and moved to the Texas Theatre where he was supposed to meet the person or persons who would take him to the airfield, still following the "second plot".

I have just added my bit. I guess James would wish to be relieved from the administering the payments and this should be respected. I guess we would not be short of funds if annual calls for donations would be issued when a dedicated EF account runs below a certain threshold, e.g., three monthly payments.

The point of my post was that Hosty's statement written not on any sheet of paper but on a sheet he admitted to have taken in Fritz's office was authentic. Whether Hosty scribbled his notes on this sheet of paper while in Fritz's office or transcribed them moments after the interrogation session on this sheet of paper is tangential to the question of whether Lee Oswald told them during the 3.15 PM session that he went out to watch the P. parade. The other point I developed in my post was that it was possible for Lee Oswald to respond to the noise of the crowd he heard while sitting in Domino room and move toward the front of the building and into the doorway in time to be filmed by Dave Wiegman. That would be the scenario that Agent Hosty described in his hand-written notes bearing the DPD affiliation.

Mr. Frazier will never tell the full truth about the events he witnessed during the assassination Friday. I read his autobiography book and watched or listened to perhaps all his interviews he made over the long period of time since that fateful Friday, November 22, 1963. Mr. Frazier still experiences symptoms of postraumatic stress disorder which he seems to have developed based on the hardship he sustained as a child, especially the abuse from his stepfarther, and triggered by his situation on that Friday. The symptoms of PTSD include lapses in memory, often very selective and related to the stressful event, avoiding conversations on the topic, and emotional distress experienced when recalling the events. Mr. Frazier has manifested all of these symtoms. The life threatening event was the interrogation at the Dallas police headquarters which threatened to make him an accomplice to the assassination by his assocation with Lee Oswald. Mr. Frazier may genuinly not remember that he had briefly seen Lee in the doorway even if Lee was there, less than 3 feet away from him.

There cannot be any doubts about the authenticity of Hosty's statement regarding Oswald going out to watch the "P parade". The narrative containing this statement was written on a sheet of paper used by the Dallas Police to take affidavits from witnesses. Hosty in his book "Assignment Oswald" confirmed that he grabbed such a sheet from Fritz's desk at the start of the interrogation session at 3.15PM, November 22. Hosty notes on Oswald's whereabouts, discovered by Bart Kamp, match Hosty's own book exactly except the small detail about going out to watch the "P. parade". Briefly, the notes and the book say that Oswald was eating his lunch in the first floor lunchroom during the time when the motorcade passed the building. It is possible that Lee Oswald heard the excitement and the crowd noise when the motorcade approached Dealey Plaza and began turning onto Houston street. I made a time reconstruction of Lee's trajectory starting in Domino room and ending in the doorway which can be found here (my post dated August 29, 2020): https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/22247-prayer-man-is-a-man/page/14/ This time reconstruction allows Lee to leave Domino room within a 9-second window starting 3 seconds after the motorcade turned onto Houston street and still be filmed by Wiegman as standing in the doorway. Thus, it appears that Lee walked out to watch "P. parade" but he came in to the doorway only around the time of the third shot or even a moment later.

There may have been multiple line-ups in which Lee Oswald participated. The principle of the line-ups was always the same - Lee had to look odd in a line-up. In one of the line-ups, Lee was paraded in a T-shirt with teenagers around him in regular shirts, and Lee complained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SzdIBn51Q In another line-up, older men possibly dressed in suits were presented along with Lee Oswald: https://www.maryferrell.org/photos.html?set=WCD-LINEUPS I was not too glad seeing one of the Forum members criticising Joseph's presentation and, by extension, his work. "Into the nightmare" is one of the most revealing and best researched books in the realm of JFK's assassination. I read it twice already, and will read it again to appreciate all details and valuable bits of information one cannot find anywhere else, e.g., the account of Joseph's interview with Tippit's father.

James Jenkin's index finger points directly to the area where he saw the open head wound before the scalp was retracted. The wound as he remembers it was sized 3x2 inches. The wound would be largely in the occipital bone and spread somewhat to the parietal bone. https://youtu.be/2U7dXPA_juM The image below is a screenshot of a frame at 29:45 in video interview with James Jenkins, assistant pathologist at the medical school of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Human heads differ in shapes and the occipital-parietal region is one of the examples. Some people have rounded occipital bones, other people have the back of the head straight and tall. This is why I showed the view of President Kennedy in which the back of his head is clearly visible. Unless your head model matched Kennedy's head in size and shape - particularly in the back portion of the head, you would not be able to conclude whether the bone was flat enough or large enough to give Harper fragment. It cannot be decided without testing it. I doubt that touching own head would help too much in this process; this method looks too simple to me, given the differences in size and shape of human heads.

As to what head wound the Parkland doctors and nurses could see on Kennedy's head, Dr Aguilar's narrative explains the situation in Trauma Room One. The head wound could not be seen from a side view and therefore, it could not be located on the convexity of the parietal bone, and it took some effort to observe the head wound in the back of the head: "Author David Lifton reported that Parkland emergency nurse Audrey Bell claimed that JFK's skull wound "was so localised at the rear of JFK's skull that, from her position on the right side on the right hand side, with Kenned's lying face up, she couldn't see any damage". It is certainly likely that a blown-out skull wound on the right side would have been visible to witnesses standing on that side. But had the skull defect been more on the back of JFK's head, rather than on the side - which, as we'll see is what virtually all the witnesses first reported - then some sense can be made of Jenkins' and Bell's comments that the wound was not visible to side witnesses. It would also help explain the similar, previously suppressed, report from a witness who was present at JFK's autopsy - General Phillip C. Wehle, Commanding Officer of the military District of Washington, D.C. After interviewing Wehle in 1978, House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA), councel D. Andy Purdy J.D., reported that, (Wehle) noted the wound was in the back of the head so he would not see it because the President was lying face up..." (page 179) "The Boston Globe reported that "some (Parkland) doctors doubted the extent to which a wound to the rear of the head would have been visible since the President was lying supine with the back of his head on a hospital cart." The Globe immediately refuted that speculation, reporting. "But others, like (Dr. Richard Dulaney) and (neurosergeon Dr. Robert) Grossman, said the head at some point was lifted up, therefore exposing the head wound". Similarly, author David Lifton reported that Parkland emergency nurse Audrey Bell, who couldn't see JFK's head wound though she was standing on the right side, asked Dr. Perry. "Where was the wound?", Perry pointed to the back of the President's head and moved the head slightly in order to show her the wound". During sworn interviews with the ARRB in 1998, Dr. Paul Peters reported , "(anesthesiologist Dr. Marion T.) Jenkins said, "Boys, before you think about opening the chest, you'd better step up here and look at his brain." And so at that point I did step around Dr. Baxter and looked into the President's head...". The ARRB's Gunn inteviewed neurosurgeon Robert Grossman, M.D. on March 21, 1997. reporting, "He (Grossman) and Kemp Clark (Chairman of Neurosurgery at Parkland) (sic) together lifted President Kennedy's head so as to be able to observe the damage to the President's head." (page 193). Quoted from Aguilar, G, The converging medical case for conspiracy, In: Murder in Dealey Plaza, J. Fetzer (ed.), Chicago Press, 2000.

Pat: I read Riley's report. His report is not really a proof of anything. His claim that occipital bone is devoid of vascular grooves is false (Dr Mantik has discussed it in detail in his book) and I myself have checked quite many plates in current anatomy books, and of course, vascular grooves can be found on the interior of the squama of occipital bone. It is quite a bit of serious work to model and fit Harper fragment into a head model, and while I started some preparatory work, this project is far from completion, and I therefore cannot show the location I currently think is the correct one because this location may change in the later stages of the project, and I do not wish to spread information about my unfinished project. However, even my preparatory reading was sufficient to be able to see obvious mistakes in the assumed parietal location of Harper fragment. The most obvious mistake is that the parietal bone is convex, angulated, while Harper fragment is a flat piece of bone. Therefore, it would not fit the parietal bone. It is encouraging that we both can agree on the fact that Harper fragment was a piece of JFK's skull and that it was blasted out from his head in such a way that a hole would have been seen on JFK's head. If it would have been on the parietal bone, all Parkland staff would see it at once and would locate it by pointing to the side of their head between vertex and the ear. But they did not do that. The hole was elsewhere - in the back of the head, this is where they pointed to. Here is a posterior view of human skull giving a good indication of how convex the parietal bone is, unlike the squama of the occipital bone above the superior nucha which region of the skull is flat. Harper fragment would only fit a flat bone. This photograph (Kennedy meeting miners in West Virginia, 1960) nicely shows the (flat) back of Kennedy's head.

There are obviously conflicting views between the professional pathologists who were able to inspect the bone fragment itself rather than to work out the locations from the photographs, Jack C. Harper, Gerard Noteboom, and A.B Cairns (chief of pathology department at Methodist Hospital, Dallas), and the experts called by the HSCA. Dr Mantik did a good job to dispute the views of J.J Riley and J. Angel who likewise were experts. My point is that none of the reports by the HSCA experts or Dr Mantik are based on a realistic reconstruction of the fragment and its fitting into a model of JFK's head, and none of their work is convincing enough. It is not possible just to claim something, it is necessary to prove it. The HSCA did all to obfuscate and not really investigate the medical evidence (e.g., forcing Dr Humes to shift the entry wound from the level of external occipital protuberance about 10 cm superior to the parietal bone), so Riley's and Angel's views are irrelevant today unless they presented convincing proofs of the parietal location which they did not.

Sean: Harper fragment is a flat piece of bone with only its "beacon" being curved sligthly inward. This fragment could not originate from the parietal bone as shown in the sketch in your post where the convexity of the skull is too much pronounced. The only region of the skull where this fragment could come from was the occipital bone above the occipital protuberance which bone was remarkably flat on Kennedy's skull. The curved "beacon" is from the lateral portion of the upper part of squama of occipital bone as it curves anteriorly, basically it is a part of the wall of the transverse sulcus. The two lines on the interior surface of Harper fragment are sulci for, probably, the blood vessels. While Dr Mantik and the Dallas doctors who photographed Harper fragment were correct in placing the fragment into occipital bone, Dr Mantik's fit of Harper fragment was not correct, in my opinion. I have started a 3D model of Harper fragment and downloaded a large number of CT head scans (512 heads) to find the head volume matching Kennedy's head the best, to test the goodness of fit of the realistic 3D model of Harper fragment in various hypothesised locations. However, the parietal bone location of Harper fragment would be an unlikely solution owing to the convexity of the parietal bone. From what I read about Harper fragment, no one really accomplished a proper analysis to fit this fragment into Kennedy's skull, possibly due to limited technology at that time.